The NJ released video today of conversation with Erika Benner with her explanation of the Patriots tickets:
As of this writing, there is the video, no other reporting by the NJ. The much rumored picture of Chip Flowers at the game is shown here. Benner claims that Flowers not only knew about the charge on her state card for these tickets, he told her the charge was allowable since they were doing some State business.
EDIT: The NJ has released some of its reporting on this:
Flowers, in an interview earlier this week, said he attended at Benner’s invitation the Oct. 16, 2011 Patriots game against the Dallas Cowboys at Gillette Stadium in Foxboro, Massachusetts. He said she told him she was using her family’s season tickets.
Flowers says he only learned recently that the ticket for the game he attended with her was charged to taxpayers, although he was not specific about when he learned that. He said Benner told him in the past that the NFL tickets she bought on the state card were for a different game, not the Dallas game they attended.
“I never lied about what I knew at that time,” Flowers said in an interview.
State records, however, reviewed last year by Flowers, his office and other state officials investigating Benner’s travel showed that she charged a payment to Boston Car Service that posted on her state credit card on Oct. 17, the day after Flowers and Benner used the car service to travel to the Patriots game.
The car service picked Flowers and Benner up from a Boston apartment that Flowers said his law firm uses. The car was billed to the state at $595, and repaid three months later. The tickets, which also were repaid, were purchased through the online retailer StubHub at a cost of $539.